{"id":72699,"date":"2018-07-08T13:00:16","date_gmt":"2018-07-08T17:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=72699"},"modified":"2018-07-08T15:41:10","modified_gmt":"2018-07-08T19:41:10","slug":"nyt-op-ed-fred-rogers-and-the-loveliness-of-the-little-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=72699","title":{"rendered":"(NYT Op-ed) Fred Rogers and the Loveliness of the Little Good"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-1i0edl6 e2kc3sl0\">Once, as Tom Junod described in a\u00a0<a class=\"css-1g7m0tk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esquire.com\/entertainment\/tv\/a27134\/can-you-say-hero-esq1198\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">profile<\/a>\u00a0for Esquire, Rogers met a 14-year-old boy whose cerebral palsy left him sometimes unable to walk or talk. Rogers asked the boy to pray for him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1i0edl6 e2kc3sl0\">The boy was thunderstruck. He had been the object of prayers many times, but nobody had asked him to pray for another. He said he would try since Mister Rogers must be close to God and if Mister Rogers liked him he must be O.K.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1i0edl6 e2kc3sl0\">Junod complimented Rogers on cleverly boosting the boy\u2019s self-esteem, but Rogers didn\u2019t look at the situation that way at all: \u201cOh, heavens no, Tom! I didn\u2019t ask him for his prayers for\u00a0<em class=\"css-2fg4z9 ehxkw330\">him<\/em>; I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his\u00a0<em class=\"css-2fg4z9 ehxkw330\">intercession<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And here is the radicalism that infused that show: that the child is closer to God than the adult; that the sick are closer than the healthy; that the poor are closer than the rich and the marginalized closer than the celebrated.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/07\/05\/opinion\/mister-fred-rogers-wont-you-be-my-neighbor.html\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once, as Tom Junod described in a\u00a0profile\u00a0for Esquire, Rogers met a 14-year-old boy whose cerebral palsy left him sometimes unable to walk or talk. Rogers asked the boy to pray for him. The boy was thunderstruck. He had been the<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=72699\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,101,435,417],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-children","category-ministry-of-the-ordained","category-presbyterian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72699"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72702,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72699\/revisions\/72702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}